Final Days

Today was our last day visiting in Kentucky. In the morning we will hit the road and begin the long journey home again. Here are a few shots I’ve taken over these past few days:

Unknown milkweed

This is some sort of milkweed, but I don’t know the precise species. It could be swamp milkweed, but I’m not sure enough to make the call. I found it at the edge of a ditch near the hotel.

Another unknown

There was lots of this near the hotel too, and I have no idea what it might be. At first I thought it might be some sort of a mint, but the leaves were most definitely not minty smelling. I plucked one and held it against the sky to better capture its general form:
If anyone out there on the interwebs knows what it is, I’d love to hear it.

We spent our last evening at my parent’s house. Dad has a hummingbird feeder set up there, and he has reported that the hummingbirds have at times landed on him while he was refilling their feeder. I figured that if they were that unafraid of humans, I might as well try to take advantage of that.

I stood by the feeder for several minutes while these tiny little mosquitoes tried to carry me away. Seems the females were more brave than the males, as several of them buzzed me.

Female ruby-throated hummingbird

I eventually backed away a bit and used my camera’s crappy zoom. It did better than usual:

Miss Ruby

I usually reduce the size of the images I post here so I don’t have to wait five minutes for the photo to upload, and chew up all the bandwidth in the house. This one is not reduced at all though – just cropped. Same effect on the bandwidth though.

I really enjoyed spending time with Mom and Dad, so it’s kind of sad to be heading out in the morning. However, the temperature at my house is 59 degrees right now, and I am looking forward to that again.

Miss Ruby was very cooperative and ladylike. Her first shot is grainy because I was trying for the fastest shutter speed and had to bump up the ISO to get there. But it almost stopped her wing! She was hovering some distance from the feeder, unsure if she should get any closer with me standing there.